


beauty despite daylight

by feralphoenix



Series: the away game [7]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anxiety, Autistic Frisk, Explicit Sexual Content, Intersex Frisk, Intrusive Thoughts, Nonverbal Frisk, Other, Painplay, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rough Sex, Safeword Use, Size Difference, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route, Xeno, meltdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 16:55:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14877689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Sometimes things go wrong.





	beauty despite daylight

**Author's Note:**

> _(games you can’t win, ‘cause you play against you_ – and there had been war, and that thing ([my soul](https://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/174511329829/)) was a lost star or a lost boat, adrift)  
>   
> 
> this story is a little bit more emotionally heavy than others in this series, so if you're here for the fluff and only the fluff it's okay to skip it.
> 
> asriel has some control-related kinks and violent fantasies that he has a difficult, fraught relationship with in light of the fact that he was very violent with frisk and chara in canon (and in light of his past deeds as flowey). while he does his best to be responsible and explore these kinks in safe environments only (e.g. through consensual roleplay and fiction), he has a lot of anxiety about what he believes himself to still be capable of, and that anxiety is compounded by his intrusive thoughts. this fic involves asriel being triggered during sex due to said anxiety (as well as frisk having a meltdown due to unrelated stress).
> 
> asriel's, frisk's, and chara's wants and needs are all very different and don't always mesh well, which sometimes leads to situations like this one when someone misjudges their own limits or makes a mistake.

Frisk’s stride is broad and their footfalls heavy as they speed down the lavish hotel carpet towards your shared room. They’re not really _running,_ not breaking their composure quite that badly—not yet anyway—but it’s too rushed and impatient to be thought of as a march.

You’re bigger, the size of your gait is wider, but they’re rapidly leaving you behind, growing smaller down the hallway. You have to trot to keep up.

They palm the door open and you manage to grab the side of it and duck through just in time to avoid having to reopen it yourself, shut it carefully behind you as Frisk struggles out of their shoes and socks. Their breathing, which was only a little bit rough before, is sharp and shaky and coming in great heaves that move their shoulders and upper arms, makes a mountain range of their back.

They make a fist with their left hand here, now that the door is shut and only you can see, and they take this fist and slam it sideways into the wall without looking at it. A wordless whine of frustration and rage and impotent hurt geysers up out of them, soft first and then almost loud enough to hurt your ears. You can remember making a noise like that when you were little and throwing tantrums. You can only know the vague shape of how bad it truly has to be for Frisk to be making the same noise now, as an adult.

Emotion seems to froth off them, three times their size or more, struggling and writhing to escape from their too-small human skin. They inhale raggedly and then make the same angry griefstruck whine a second time, louder, beating their left forearm against the wall again with more force.

This is restrained compared to some of the meltdowns you’ve seen Frisk have when the two of you were kids, but they’re _very_ upset and very, very much rightfully so and you don’t want them to get so carried away they hurt themself, so. As they pull the fist back a third time you set your hands on their shoulders and gently reel them back towards you until the small of their back hits your belly.

“Frisk,” you murmur, soft and low as you can, leaning down a little so you can address them softly but still far enough up that the end of your muzzle isn’t grazing their cheek or ear. They might not be in the mood for affection right now but with them small and hot and vibrating up against you already, your dick is starting to perk up automatically. You may not be able to help your own inopportune arousal, but you can at least try your best to avoid pouring oil on the fire in case Frisk needs you but doesn’t want this part of you at the moment.

So you swallow and start over. “Frisk, is there anything I can do to help comfort you? Anything I can get for you? Only please don’t hit the walls or hurt yourself. I think it’d be worse if the banging noises got the hotel staff’s attention.”

Frisk shivers against you and squirms in your hold, restless but not trying to break away from you. (Your balls pound a little; pressure builds up in your lower belly and the head of your cock slips past the wet lips of your sheath. Biting your lip saves you from moaning.)

“I need…,” they rasp, flat and expressionless in the way their voice only gets when they’re too overwhelmed to monitor their tone—Frisk’s equivalent to the way that Chara either goes full purple prose or tiny sentence fragments when _they’re_ upset. There’s a long pause. “Dark,” they say. Another long pause. “Pressure… _weight._ Want—” they turn their head to look sidelong at you, not meeting your eyes but still looking at your face— “something in me right now. Will you…?”

This time you can’t help but give a little bit of a whine as your dick bulks up with blood, still pinned to your stomach by your clothes but probably easily visible through them. “If that’s okay with you right now,” you hedge. Your grasp at being reasonable sounds shaky even to you.

Frisk twists a little further in your arms, enough to nuzzle the side of their face against your chest and get a hand up to cup your erection through your clothes. The heat of their palm against the—the base of the shaft, the underside, right where you’re weak—it fucking _undoes_ you. They stroke you a little and your vision grays; you moan soft and wanton and you can _feel_ yourself leaking precome, warm wetness spreading over your fur and the front of your robes.

“Need to stim anyway,” Frisk says, their voice wobbling. “Wanna come. Want it _rough._ Wanna feel this tomorrow.”

Holy _shit._ They’re already so warm and buzzing with need up against you; if you were ten years, even _five_ years younger you think you’d have come all over yourself just hearing those words. You shiver and lick your chops instead of just scooping them up and tossing them down onto the bed, ‘cause talking out some basics first is important when you wanna go hard. “How d’you wanna do this…?”

Frisk squirms, maybe impatient, and they reach up with restless hands to pull your face down and kiss the tip of your nose, your lips. “Hate this suit,” they say. “Tear it off. Hold me down. Need the weight. No c,” they go silent briefly, then rephrase: “Don’t use your mouth first. _I want it to hurt too.”_

Holy shit, they’re _serious._ You swallow to bear the eager pounding in your loins. A younger you would’ve come again here, just from those words. “God. Yeah. Okay. If it—if it’s too much, then safeword, yeah?”

Frisk bobs their head rapidly. You swallow again, release them, and step back to struggle out of your robes and your boxers as quickly as you can without getting anything caught on your horns or claws. Letting your penis stand free is by itself such a relief that your sinuses sting and your eyes go damp, and then there’s Frisk, staring up at you, eyes all huge and dark with lust.

They reach out and grip your shoulders and you grab them by the waist and you tow each other in close, mouths meeting in an awkward click of teeth as you both go in for a bite and wind up pinning each other’s lips, tiny bright stings. Frisk tilts their head and runs their tongue along your incisors and you close your teeth gently on them, press down and release, press down and release, til they’re loose and whining and licking the side of your mouth up to the corner where your lips are thickest. Your cock pokes them in the stomach and slides across the silky material of their suit jacket, leaking gobs of precome all over the expensive material.

The jacket’s still fastened at their front. You get your fists into it and growl and Frisk whines and your pulse speeds and your dick thrills and you— _yank._

The buttons go _flying_ with satisfying _ping_ s against the walls, and you keep pulling and the jacket goes _rip rip RIP_ all the way up the back until you can tug it off of Frisk in two halves. You drop them on the floor at your feet, both of you laughing breathlessly. They have a wine-colored tie on that fits through the collar of their thin silky blouse like a noose; you tilt their chin up with one hand and get your claws underneath it with the other, lean your head down so your nose brushes against the shivering pulse in their throat—and bite.

Frisk makes fists in your chest fur and moans as you claw and bite and pull at the fabric of their tie, shudders as it comes loose and drops wetly to the floor.

You grab two fistfuls of the shirt and you barely even have to pull for the buttons to explode off, rattling away in every direction. It shreds in your claws instead of ripping neatly in two, and looking at the way it hangs off Frisk in jagged ribbons you both laugh; they let go of you and peel off the remnants while you claw the front of their pants open, yanking the legs down their soft ample thighs.

On the way back up you grip them by those thighs and lift them up to you; they grab your shoulders and hug your belly between their knees. The tip of your head brushes and slips along the crotch of their panties and they make a soft guttural noise and rub against you; you plant your feet and rock your hips to keep frotting against them there, growling. Frisk makes a thin little pleased noise and you tighten your hold on their thighs; your dick leaks precome again, slicking up their panties so that they feel silky smooth against your fevered skin.

Your body wants more pleasure _now_ but you persuade it back to task with the knowledge that Frisk’s pussy is gonna feel even better than this and it’ll make them happy if you comfort them as they asked. So you heft Frisk higher up and step one two three four five to the hotel bed,  half drop and half toss them rough but tender back against the extra-large mattress. They bounce a little and grab the comforter with both hands, chin tucked to their chest to gaze vacantly at you. There’s white marks from your claws on their thighs and the crotch of their panties is so wet from your precome it’s almost see-through; their clit’s tenting their underwear and they undulate their hips as you watch them, clearly impatient.

You swing by the bedside table and grab for this morning’s bottle of lube before you climb up onto the bed with them because—fuck, they’re probably wet and _you’re_ a dripping mess and they specifically asked for pain but going straight to PIV with no further foreplay means you’ll both need the extra help. You pull their panties down first, more gently than you tore off the rest of their clothes since you think Frisk likes these and matching sets of plus size bras and panties are almost as expensive as their suits. When you toss them softly towards the edge of the bed it takes them a second to slip off onto the floor.

Here you pause just a second to admire them: How their breasts shake as they breathe, sweat clumping their chest and belly hair, their glasses slightly askew and their gaze hungry. But after that second passes you sit and swing your haunches to settle over them, perched between their legs.

Your hands are shaking as you fumble with the lube cap, claws skittering on the plastic ineffectually til you manage to get a good grip. Squirting some onto your dick makes you jump—this stuff is room temperature but it feels _cold_ on your heated skin. You spread it up and down the length of your shaft with your left hand, careful not to rub your fur or claws over your sensitive skin; even before you’re done you reach out impatiently with your right to thumb one side of Frisk’s wet lips open and give yourself a clearer view of their vagina.

Frisk whines, urgent. You lean forward, line yourself up, press the tip up into them and keep pushing.

They’re always a little on the narrow side, but you have to really force yourself in—having skipped your usual one or two minutes of using your tongue to stretch out their walls in preparation, they’re unusually tight, and you feel almost as if the powerful muscles of their pussy will push you right back out again until you manage to get the rim through. Frisk mewls under you and your cock pounds to hear such a helpless noise from them; you grunt and grab the mattress with your feet and jam yourself the rest of the way in. They gasp and shiver when you hit their cervix.

You have to hold still for a minute, lightheaded—Frisk is almost _too_ tight. The precome that’d been building in your shaft all squirts out in a rush, and they moan, wriggling their hips and flexing around you, dampening; your cock and balls throb with imagining that you’ve poured yourself directly into their womb. You can feel your shaft trying to expand, pushing back against the crushing pressure of their walls. Frisk’s head lolls back against the mattress. They’re smiling.

“Hold me down,” they breathe, hoarse. “Want it _hard.”_

You nod; you didn’t forget what they asked for. You grab their hip with one hand just to steady yourself, then rest your other hand over the bottom of their chest, rest some of your weight there, hoping it’ll be enough pressure for them but still not enough to risk hurting them. Your hand’s so big that if you spread your fingers out you can almost span their whole waist.

Frisk squirms beneath you, probably testing the same thing; looking at them writhing there pinned in place goes right to your balls, and your dick does its level best to twitch in their pussy’s death grip. Their small smile curls into a bigger one, and you moan. They stretch out their hands to you and nod.

How tight they are forces you to thrust in at a stilted pace at first. The soft feathery ribbed flesh of them grips you more than stroking, and it’s _only_ the lube and your and their precome that keeps it from chafing. Physically it doesn’t really feel all that good just yet. But Frisk wiggling under your hand, small and soft and warm and egging you on, is a powerfully erotic sight. You bare your teeth and snarl and buck your hips harder, your ears flopping all over the place; Frisk whines and trembles and the flesh of their breasts and belly ripples a little from how hard you’re fucking them.

Maybe a minute or so inwards you notice that they’re starting to get more slippery inside, wet squelchy noises rising when you thrust in, frothy precome flying into your fur and splashing up their legs and onto their belly. The way you’re holding them down it’s difficult for Frisk to get a good angle to thrust back up onto your cock, but they grab at your sides with their heels and gyrate their hips so your strokes press more firmly against different sides of their pussy every time you move in and out.

You tighten your grip on their hip a little more, firm enough for your claws to dig into their skin but not enough to draw blood, and rest just a _tiny_ bit more weight on their middle. Frisk shudders and tries to arc up off the mattress fruitlessly; their left hand flies loose from the sheets to grasp at your arm, and their pussy _rolls_ around you, rippling then rippling then _squeezing._ They wriggle and moan as they come and they’re gloriously wet now and your balls are _pounding_ but they’re too tight, it’s too uncomfortable for you to come too.

Frisk pats at your arm. “Harder,” they beg, voice croaky. “Harder, harder.”

“Gotta move,” you pant. “Need better footing.”

They make a little motion like a nod, so you grab their waist in both hands and drag the both of you backwards step by step until you can stretch your legs out to plant both feet firmly on the floor. This’s a much better angle for your legs, and will give you more room to swing your hips too.

You pull the left strap of their bra down over their shoulder, peel the cup off their left breast, and rest your right hand over it; it fills your palm and fingers so much more than Chara’s breasts do, and you roll it against your palm, feel their heartbeat humming beneath your fingertips. Their nipple goes hard and you moan and they’re still too tight for you to come but your dick leaks another little burst of precome. Frisk tips their hips up and grinds their cervix against your head, eager for you to fill them up, and if you could you’d empty your balls in them _right now_ until the come is pouring out of them—

“Harder,” Frisk moans. “Pin me harder, fuck me harder. Please.”

You swallow hard, rest your left hand over their belly so you’ve got them held down with both arms—draw your legs back—and plunge in at full force.

The air rushes out of their lungs in one short huff, their eyes shutter closed, their glasses bounce and slip. You haven’t got the breath for praise or dirty talk; all your strength’s gone into keeping them in place and humping them as vigorously as you can. Drool drips off your tongue when you go too long without remembering to shut your mouth and swallow; the head of your cock is starting to tingle a little from how hard you’re slamming it into the depths of them.

Frisk is still way too tight for you to come, and keeps getting tighter yet from their own arousal; it feels like every time you plunge back into them you have to force them open anew. But all the precome you’ve leaked and their own come and any lube that might be left have coalesced into slippery perfection, and their pussy takes you as deep as physically possible on every thrust, friction on the stroke in via crushing resistance and on the pull back out too as their walls cling to your shaft.

The best part is the way they play-struggle, squirming and writhing and wriggling under your hands as they rub the sides of their pussy against you, then go soft and limp and grasp at your fingers without any strength, eyes unfocused, smiling as they pant. They’re so—so _helpless_ beneath you, and so _pliant_ too. As long as you keep working them with your cock you think they’d let you do just about _anything_ to them, and that idle thought burns in your stomach. You _need_ to come.

You snarl and arch your back, gripping the hotel carpet and resting more of your weight on Frisk so that you can pound them even harder. They make a tiny little noise you can barely parse over the thunder of your own harsh panting, and you dig your nails into their skin to make them do it again.

It makes them _come._ Their pussy goes all warm and fluid and steep around you, needy and pulling, crushingly tight around you—but you just keep growling and spread your toes and fuck them faster, til they’re squeaking every time your head thumps into their cervix. Their legs are too shaky to stay around your waist, and they fall wide and splayed and accepting, tightening their spasming muscles around you even more. They squirm ineffectually, wiggle and writhe, but your hips keep plunging in and plunging in, your cock swelling and throbbing with the need to let go.

You’ll need to fuck them at this pace for a while longer until they’re slippery and loose enough for you to come but as physically uncomfortable as it is that discomfort is more and more distant to you because you _want_ to keep railing them at full strength. God, you want to just, just _fuck them up,_ plow their insides until the shape of your cock’s seared into their mind forever, fuck them into quivering helplessness and then keep going until you’re utterly spent. You wanna push them down into the mattress, really dig your claws in, you wanna _tear,_ you could just absolutely rip them to pieces—

Superimposed over Frisk soft and warm and passive and panting beneath you as you ram your dick into them over and over and over you briefly see Frisk as a child, just as overpowered as they are right now. You _did_ literally rip them open then, and you thought nothing of it; you just laughed as they died, and then you let them come back and try again just so you could kill them even more brutally.

You feel suddenly distant, a chill swooping into your belly. Simultaneously, horribly, your penis bucks in preparation to come.

“A—,” you choke. Your arms go rigid, all your fur standing on end. Your hips keep slamming forward mechanically, less controlled and a little weaker but still chasing what feels good. “An—Antares. Antares.”

Frisk stills beneath you, their eyes suddenly focusing on your face, expression going somber. They reach up with both hands and pry your fingers loose from their breast, move your hand onto the safe sheets next to them, sheets that aren’t alive and won’t hurt if you dig your nails in. They repeat this process with your left hand, setting it too on the mattress, and even if their ability to maneuver you probably comes a lot from how you’ve frozen, it’s still a relief to see them capable of working to dislodge you.

Your hips are still bucking into them, but shallowly, inertia starting to take hold. They don’t cling at you anymore, and in fact they rise up on their elbows and scoot awkwardly back up the mattress a bit, too far for your dick to chase them even on autopilot. The head comes loose with a wet _pop,_ and your hips gradually slow to a stop, letting your engorged penis hang heavy in the air as you close your eyes and try to get your breathing under control.

It does not help. The intrusive memory and the fact that you were thinking about hurting Frisk, that you were getting off to the thought, are on fucking spin cycle in your shit garbage brain. There’re things your therapist taught you to help deal with this, to ground yourself, but you can’t think straight because you’re too hard. You need to do something about this boner first.

So you push yourself up with an effort, open your eyes and look at Frisk, who’s sitting up now, tucking their breast back into their bra. They reach for the strap and then notice you looking at them, and bring their hands back around to sign.

_Asriel, are you all right?_

You try for a laugh but it just sorta comes out as a huff. “No,” you say. “I need to—I gotta,” and you gesture at your dick here lamely.

They’re already nodding. _Okay, take your time._ You let your breath out with relief and stand up awkwardly and head for the bathroom, switch the lights on and pull back the shower curtain.

You grab for your dick and then drop it just as quickly, gasping. Your pads feel rough as fucking _sandpaper,_ your fur like scratchy steel wool, your claws like _razors._ Neon spots start to cross your vision, and your penis starts to tingle and crackle with the loathed sensation of pins and needles. Frisk was squeezing you so hard and you were going so rough that your boner was literally on the fucking verge of falling asleep.

If you had the brain to spare you’d literally sit down on the floor and bawl like a ten-year-old. You don’t. Your body feels like an open nerve from how bad you need relief. You’d fucking turn the tub’s faucet on and plunge yourself under the cold spray, but as pent up and oversensitive as you are, you know from experience that it’d feel like having your dick split open by a frozen knife.

You think you actually sort of deserve that right now, but you’d holler for sure and you don’t want to make Frisk feel even _worse_ after you already had to safeword out of sex they needed to help deal with their meltdown. So you swallow instead. “Frisk?” you call, hating how plaintive and shaky your voice is.

They open the door softly; you turn to look over your shoulder at them. They’ve fixed their bra, but their stomach and thighs are still a dripping mess from your interrupted sex—rough as you were being, stuff got _everywhere._ In the bathroom light the froth along the insides of their thighs looks pink, and your stomach gets another cold jolt. Off-balance, you stare down at your own penis; the fur of your belly and thighs is pink too, and so’s your dick. You start to shake. You didn’t want Frisk to _bleed._

They rest a very gentle hand on your arm. Your heart rattles in your chest, and you look down.

_What do you need?_ they ask, gentle, calm.

“I can’t,” you start, and then stop. “I need,” and you stop again. “I’m too—my hands are too, and water would be too—I just really need to come so I can think but I can’t, could you maybe, I mean if you’re okay with that…?”

Frisk nods seriously and gives you a thumbs up. _I’ll just make you come then, no frills._ They bring their hands up to their mouth and slick both up with a generous amount of saliva, then bring themself in closer over your dick where you stand at the edge of the shower.

They wrap their right hand around the base of you, right down at your sheath, and set the left on the underside of the head, where the rim dips into the shaft. They rub their right hand back and forth around your girth instead of pumping up and down, and play the fingers of their left along the underside of the head gently, kneading the hot spot just behind the rim with their palm. They don’t touch you anywhere else.

It’s enough. You _wail_ and your dick jumps and a spume of come hits the shower wall with a crack, followed by another long hard spurt, and another, and another, until you start to soften and your semen is just dribbling over Frisk’s fingers. It doesn’t even feel good, not really, not the warm ripples of pleasure spreading from your penis and balls up all through your body that you usually experience on orgasm. It _is_ a relief, though, all that pent-up pressure in your pipes let out. It feels more like the long sigh while finally getting to pee after you’ve had to hold it for too long.

You start to shake—from relieved tension, from shame, from exhaustion, from regret. Your come is dripping lazily down the shower wall and you stare at it blankly. Half a cup’s worth of the stuff wasted, when you wanted to pour it into Frisk to make them happy—they always want you to come inside them, you know they love how it feels. You’re such an idiot. You swallow and turn to Frisk, because they didn’t have to come and help you after all this but they still did. “Thank you,” you manage.

Frisk smiles and lets you go, steps away. You hear the sink go on behind you as they presumably rinse their hands clean, and then they shut the water off and quietly close the door.

Your stomach has started to hurt, guts squirming, lower back aching. At least it’s your intestines instead of nausea—you’re already going to be asking a lot of the hotel’s cleaning staff as it is, you do _not_ need to add to that by throwing up. Instead you just sit on the toilet and proceed to absolutely shit your guts out, thinking dark thoughts about _human food._ If _you’d_ gotten to cook instead of having to sit in on stupid embassy banquets your body would’ve cleanly absorbed everything by now and you wouldn’t have to worry about anything coming out of _either end,_ but _noooooooo._

That can only serve as a distraction for so long, though; you turn the shower on because you have _got_ to clean off your stomach and your dick for the sake of your own sanity and you think you’re no longer so oversensitive that doing that will hurt. You keep the water cool as you step under it, and let it tap on you, doing your best to note the sensation of shower spray soaking your fur, the feel of the tub floor under your pads, the thoughts that are going in and out of your head. You’re really bad at mindfulness, but your therapist tells you to at least try it if you think it might help, and right now you’ll try anything.

It’s important to keep in mind that you did not actually hurt Frisk. You didn’t hold them down and do anything to them against their will, and you didn’t tear their skin open. You had a lot of strong, formative experiences back when you were using wanton violence to cope with your boredom and your conscience was on extended leave, and that created a lot of worn pathways in your mind, and that’s why you keep having violent intrusive thoughts like this.

Your therapist’s rhetoric falls apart a little, you think, when he tells you that the thoughts don’t mean you’re a bad person. A lot of your intrusive thoughts are flashbacks to things you _have_ done to at least _someone,_ if not the person in front of you—you were just extra unlucky, to have flashed back to actually murdering Frisk over and over to taunt them when you were kids.

He would tell you, though, that you no longer do those things. Your violent power fantasies, the way feeling in control turns you on—you do your best to only engage with that stuff in safe ways, like scenes with Frisk that you negotiate beforehand. Your impulses scare the shit out of you, and you’re not sure that you can be trusted with being in control, but your therapist’s worked with you extensively on making sure you have good self-control in situations that might trigger you.

Today was a _success._ You safeworded, you ended the situation.

It just doesn’t _feel_ like a success. You’re still a sicko and a murderer and you were thinking about hurting the partner you love and who trusts you, and on top of all that, you let Frisk down when they needed you. So nice try, _logic._

You shut the water off. You’re shivering from the cold and your penis is starting to feel bruised from what you’ve put it through tonight, but you’re clean. You wrap up in a towel just for the sensation of something warm tight around your body, and then hang the towel back up and dry yourself off with magic.

Tentative, you open the door.

Frisk is kneeling on top of the bed, riding one of their bigger dildos—it’s still a little smaller than you are but they’ve said before that it’s similar enough in a pinch. They’re at an angle with their back mostly to you; their face is smooth and expressionless and their eyes are mostly shut. They’ve taken their glasses off.

While you stand watching they shudder and grunt and speed up, breath roughening just a little. They keep riding the toy through their orgasm and then finally slow and rise up off it. The silicone shaft is shiny with their fluids and just as distinctly pink as you were before your shower; the shade makes you feel a little sick, so you turn slightly away.

Frisk tucks the dirty dildo back into their inventory, presumably meaning to clean it later. They’re squinting, so you reach back into the bathroom and turn its lights off; you have to blink to adjust to the dimmer lighting of the main hotel room.

_I still need something in here,_ they sign once your eyes’ve adjusted, _but I’m just going to put a vibe in and get in bed with all the extra covers and a weighted blanket._ They pause here. _If you want to get on top of the bed too—just on top, you don’t have to get in with me—you can sit next to me, maybe lay on me or we can spoon later when you’re feeling better._

You nod to them. The sheets on the hotel bed are different, you realize; they must’ve gotten out a fresh set and changed them while you were in the shower.

Frisk smiles and produces a different, human-sized dildo with an unrealistic stylized shape and buttons and things on one end. Then, as promised, they shimmy underneath the covers and the extra blankets and things they’ve fetched, producing their weighted blanket on top of those. Finally they adjust the pillows and burrow down into their blanket nest, just as they said they would. The overall effect is that of a giant burrito or crescent roll, or maybe a chrysalis twice Frisk’s size. After a minute or so you can faintly hear the steady humming buzz of the vibrator.

You breathe in and then out, and go get yourself a pair of fresh underpants and a sleeveless dress, and put those on. If you’d had an ounce of foresight you’d have brought a handheld on this trip so that you could empty your mind of outside thoughts playing a game, but you’re stupid, so you did not do this. You pick up your phone instead, and sit on the bed next to the Frisk cocoon.

There’s no good games on here, just free dumb puzzle stuff, and you don’t want to look at the Internet now and see articles about your and Frisk’s performance today or the anti-autistic hate group whose representatives have been harassing your partner or any of the intersex community infighting that’s got Frisk caught very publicly in its crosshairs, the three major causal factors of their breakdown today.

You want to whine to somebody and be comforted like a kid, really, but you absolutely cannot take this to Chara. A lot of the kinky stuff you and Frisk do for fun to blow off steam really genuinely upsets them because of bad things they’ve been through, and if you and Frisk _playing_ already risks triggering them, then you unloading to them about this incident would be more than they could ever handle.

It’s too late at night for your therapist to be available, but you send him a message saying that there was an incident and you were triggered very badly and you need to see him at his earliest convenience once you’re back from this trip. He should reply to you by morning.

You’re frowning at your contacts list trying to decide who if anyone you want to talk to when your phone buzzes and you nearly jump out of your skin. Frisk is messaging you.

Guts squirming again from fear, you open your chat program.

_i am so sorry i sprang this on you w/o warning. we shouldve talked it out more like i KNOW to check if youre in the right headspace for domming & w/e but i didnt and it was so fucking irresponsible of me not to, im really sorry :(_

You make a face. _I’m sorry too! I should’ve thought of that myself. I should think of that like in general, I shouldn’t just leave it to you to always be the responsible one and worry about if we’re negotiating scenes and rough stuff thoroughly enough. You had your hands full with yourself. You were rational enough to worry about your own consent and limits but not mine too. And you SHOULD NOT have to worry about that when you’re that overwhelmed. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you._

The typing dots pop up and disappear several times after you hit send, but in the end Frisk only sends sad faces at you, and _its not all your fault tho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_I know,_ you answer, which is true. _I still feel really bad, though._ You consider whether it would make things worse to say this now, and then consider that it would make things even worse than that if you had a repeat incident, so you go ahead. _Um…………………… is it okay if we take a break from rougher stuff until I get to have a therapy appointment, though? I just wanna be extra sure we avoid setting off a guilt and self-blame Mobius strip =’)_

_yeah ofc thats fine!!!!!!!!_ A pause. _so w/the preface that i def dont blame u or hate u & am not mad at u for any of this: r yuo mad at me,,,,,,,,,_

You smile a little. _I’m not mad at you, and I don’t blame you, and I definitely don’t hate you. I’m sorry. I love you, Frisk._

_i love u too <3_

After this they don’t send any other messages.

You return to your contacts list. Undyne and Alphys are probably either in bed or watching anime or, well, having sex themselves right now; your mom is probably grading the latest homework mountain. Sans sucks and isn’t a great guy to talk about this stuff with, and Papyrus’ relative lack of interest in sex means that any and all of this would be an alien topic for him.

But there _is_ someone here in this very hotel who knows most of the general situation, and who you can talk to about the bad things you’ve done in the past.

_Hey, Dad? Have you got a minute?_

You hold your breath for as long as you can, then let it out, and are taking a second deep breath when he answers: _Of course! What do you need?_

_Can you come to my and Frisk’s room to get me for a little while? There was a thing and Frisk is calming down by themself right now but I think I need help._

Another pause, probably while your dad painstakingly works his phone. _I will be right there, my son._

You tab back over to your chat with Frisk. _Hey, I’m gonna go take a walk with Dad for a while? I’ll be back soon, but is there anything you want me to grab for you while I’m out?_

_water & mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaybe some vending machine candy???????????_ Frisk answers.

Despite yourself, you grin. _Sure thing._

You only have to wait a couple minutes for your dad to arrive. There’s a soft knock at the door, and you sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed as carefully as you can so as not to dislodge Frisk, stumbling a little on your way across the room because the tattered ruins of their clothes are still lying all over the floor. Too late to clean up _those_ if your dad sees them and has questions; good going, Asriel!

You cram your phone into your pocket and open the door, and there’s your dad. He’s changed out of his royal robes and into a button-down shirt and jeans since conferences let out but he’s got his Regal Bearing turned up to max. Your mom’s the one with the laser vision, but as your dad looks you up and down you feel hyperaware of every strand of fur that’s out of place, every sign of distress. He raises his muzzle to look over your shoulder at Frisk’s blanket burrito, and you desperately hope he’s not going to linger on the suit scraps on the floor; thankfully he just opens his arms for you to step into.

And you do that, wrapping your own arms around him and gripping the back of his shirt, resting your chin on his shoulder. Your dad’s the only person in your immediate social group who’s still bigger than you—you’ve even managed to grow taller than your mother!—and that means there’s no one on earth who hugs like he does, folds you up in his great big arms and lets you feel like it’s okay to be weak and needy and childish. It makes your eyes start to sting and your body start to quiver.

Your dad starts to do that thing where he runs his hands down the length of your spine, lifts them up and pats your upper back and then returns to stroking your back. You giggle weakly.

“Just uh, just fair warning, but if you start to go all _‘there there everything will be all right’_ at me right now, I’m probably going to lose it and it’ll be really awkward,” you say. It comes out very shaky.

Your dad chuckles. “Well, I suppose we can’t have that, now can we? Come, let us take a walk.”

“Yeah, I—that’ll help, I think, thanks. Plus on the way back I wanna buy some vending machine stuff for Frisk, so.”

Before you shut the door behind you, you take one last peek at the bed. Frisk still hasn’t moved. If you listen really hard, you can even still sort of hear the faint rumbles of their toy.

“We can go back to my room if you would like,” your father says once the two of you are out in the hall. “Or I think the pool and the workout room may still be open; I believe they are supposed to close at two in the morning on weekdays.”

“Let’s check the pool first, maybe…?” you say. “I’m pretty beat, I know I need to keep my legs moving and all but sitting on the side of the pool sounds nicer.”

“All right,” says your dad, “then let us do that.”

He reaches out to you, and you’re really glad in this moment that your dad’s your dad as you take his hand and hold it all the way.

The pool is indeed open, though its lights have been mostly turned low. There’s a bored-looking human lifeguard sitting on top of a tall chair near the deep end but the room’s otherwise totally empty; you sit on the shallow side and tuck the skirts of your dress up and around your knees so that you can drop your feet into the water, which is colder than your shower and makes your fur stand on end and your balls tighten up close to your body like just-in-case. You paddle your feet a little. There’s not much current here in the pool, just a little motion on the water’s surface from the buoys that separate the deep end’s lanes, so the water dips and peaks and swirls around your lazy kicks, spreading further and further out and getting smaller and smaller.

There are wide windows along the far side of the room and its corner that open up onto the city skyline. It’s way too bright here for you to be able to see even a tenth of the stars that you can from your dad’s house in Monster Town, where it sits at the foot of the mountains, but the distant neon glow of city lights is worth the tradeoff.

You only wish it didn’t smell so strongly of chlorine in here. The scent’ll cling to your fur until you take another shower, and you’ve definitely had enough of _those_ for one night. It makes you very glad that Frisk’s nose isn’t as sensitive as Chara’s is; this probably isn’t going to bother them so much.

Your father sits beside you, crossing his legs instead of dipping his feet into the water like you. He looks directly at you; the pale yellow of his eyes catches the overhead lights, the reflections from the pool, and the glow of the city in weird ways. You watch him a little sidelong. He reaches out and puts his hand on your back again.

“Would you like to talk about it?” he asks, quiet, so even in this room it won’t carry.

You turn back to the water and squint against the threat of tears. “Frisk and I made some… we both made some kinda dumb choices and we got in over our heads tonight, and I…” You’re a grown ass man and you _can_ talk to your parents about sex, but it’s embarrassing, so you skim over most of it as you explain. Your dad just keeps watching you steadily; if he feels awkward about the subject matter he blessedly doesn’t show it. “I had a lot of thoughts and, and impulses I guess, that scared me. We stopped then because I was upset. And I didn’t hurt Frisk, and they’re not mad at me for not being able to comfort them, but I just—”

There’s a long pause while you try to reorder your thoughts. You lift your hands up, flex your claws on the air, and drop them back into your lap.

“I feel like I’m just—a really, really bad person,” you say. “I don’t have to _imagine_ what it would look or feel like if I hurt Frisk, because I _have_ hurt Frisk. I killed them over and over and over. I don’t even know how many times. I’ve hurt and killed _so many people,_ and it—it might not show in a way any monster can see it, but if you tallied up all the LOVE I gained playing around with the timeline… it’d probably be nearly a thousand. Sure, this timeline’s made it so that the only people I’ve ever killed were myself and Chara, and Frisk even though they wouldn’t stay dead when we fought. But that didn’t _really_ undo anything because I still remember it.

“How do you deal with it? With—with feeling like you deserve being miserable because you’re mostly fucked up from having hurt others? I don’t _want_ to be bad anymore, I want to help people and be kind but so much of _who I am_ comes from the bad things I’ve done. I don’t know what to do about that.”

Your father, whose LOVE is meager compared to whatever your real high score must be but who still killed a lot of people in an ancient war and then killed a bunch of kids on top of that, looks sad and strokes your back.

“It is very hard,” he says. “We cannot take back what we have done even if we wish we could, and we mustn’t forget what we have done either. But looking to the future, I think it’s probably more important that we try to avoid doing harm and put as much kindness into the world as we are capable.”

You flex your toes in the water. Even though your kicking hasn’t broken the surface, droplets have still splashed up and left dark splotches on the hem of your dress, are beaded along the tips of your leg fur.

“I don’t think you are a bad person,” your dad says, sliding his hand back up to your shoulder and squeezing it. “You haven’t hurt anyone like that for a very long time. You’re a kind young man and you’re trying your hardest.”

You let your body lean slowly sideways until your forehead’s planted crosswise along his chest. He wraps both arms around you and holds you tight while you get snot all over the front of his shirt—tonight just seems to be a Night for your bodily fluids and other people’s clothes, and that thought makes you giggle a little through your gross crying.

Eventually the chlorine air gets too painful for your swollen eyes and runny nose, so you get up out of the pool and leave with your father. He produces tissues from somewhere and you clean up your face so you won’t be trailing icky mucus all down the hallway. You wait until you’ve left the pool to actually dry off your legs though, so you won’t alarm the lifeguard wrapping yourself up in harmless fire and then pulling the leftover static away in long stretchy lightning.

“Darn it,” you manage, mostly not blubbering. “I don’t know if I can face a whole day of politics tomorrow. Frisk might not be able to either.”

“That’s very understandable,” says your father, who’s still hovering at your side. “Meet with me and Papyrus in the morning. We can arrange it so that we will take over for half of the important talks, or more—but you must make at least some sort of showing, so that they will not think they have won just yet.”

You smile grimly. “I hate human politics, Dad.”

He looks very apologetic. “I don’t like them much either.” And here he smiles: “We can order some ingredients and all four of us get together tomorrow night. My suite has a small kitchen and we can make a proper dinner instead of chatting with the socialites.”

You laugh weakly. _“Please._ I need a break from human cooking.”

He reaches out and frames your face softly in his hands, smile going broader. “I am more than happy to provide one, my son.”

Fondness boils up in you, and you step in and hug him again, hard. “Dad?”

Your father wraps one arm around your waist, lifting his other hand to gently card his claws through the ends of your mane. “Yes, my son?”

“Thanks for coming to get me. It really helped. You—you really helped.”

“Gosh.” The claws still; his hand cups the back of your skull. You close your eyes and list your weight a little more into the arms of the man who gave birth to you, who understands your guilt better than anyone else alive. “I’m glad of that, Asriel.”

 

 

You hug again at the door when he drops you off, and you wait for him to disappear down the hall into his own suite before you palm your room door open.

Frisk’s blanket cocoon doesn’t seem to have moved; the vibrator hum is still going too. You step back in carefully, close the door, consider the merits of cleaning up their wrecked clothes versus how much that might upset you when you LITERALLY just calmed back down, decide to err in the direction of the latter. Tiptoe around the stuff instead.

You stop on their side of the bed first, place the bottle and the crinkly bag of brightly colored sugary sour gummies next to Frisk’s glasses where they’ll be able to reach the treats easily just by sticking an arm out from beneath the covers like a gremlin if they don’t want to get up. Then you go all the way back around to your own side, fish your phone back out of your pocket, plug it in and rest it on your bedside table.

Lift up only the top comforter, lever one leg up and then the other, scoot inwards and stretch out on your side. Reach out a little to cast your arm over Frisk, hoping they won’t shake you off.

Instead they move closer to you, almost pressed up against your chest and stomach. You smile and close your eyes and rest your arm over them more firmly; cry just a little as they nestle to you soft and warm.


End file.
